Boy who played catch with Willson Contreras cherishes memory

11-year-old Brodie Case played catch with Cubs catcher Willson Contreras after a rain delay earlier this week. Brodie discusses his recent stardom and how the game of catch unfolded. (Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune)

11-year-old Brodie Case played catch with Cubs catcher Willson Contreras after a rain delay earlier this week. Brodie discusses his recent stardom and how the game of catch unfolded. (Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune)

On the way to a Wrigley Field parking lot after the best day of his life, 11-year-old Brodie Case stopped smiling last Friday only long enough to focus on the screen of a smartphone his stunned father asked him to read.

That was the kid whose innocent interaction with Contreras during a rain delay in the Cubs' 6-3 loss the Brewers attracted 2.1 million views on the Cubs' Facebook page — and counting. The kid who just finished the fifth grade at Somonauk Middle School in this small village of 1,884, about 65 miles west of Chicago, but will remember the moment if he ever takes his own children to the old ballpark. The kid who couldn't believe it when Contreras made eye contact with him just before play resumed in the Brewers sixth inning.

"Contreras was just sitting there talking to the grounds crew and everybody was calling his name but he looked right at me and pointed," Brodie said.

Naturally, the boy obeyed the gesture. An usher tried to stop Brodie from going to a spot about four rows behind the Cubs dugout, no more than 30 feet from where Contreras stood on the field in full gear. The usher relented after realizing the Cubs catcher had requested a game of catch with Brodie, who was wearing his Louisville Slugger glove.

"He threw it to me first and motioned for me to throw it back so I was like, 'Oh, he wants to play catch,' and we played catch," Brodie said. "My first throw was pretty bad because I had a glove on and the ball kind of slipped. I got better. I was just concentrating on catching the ball so I wouldn't embarrass myself. … I didn't even pay attention to any cameras. I just kept thinking, 'Don't drop it.'"

Brodie flashed a good glove, his smile growing wider after each one of Contreras' five tosses. Contreras told the Tribune's Paul Sullivan his "spur of the moment" decision to start throwing to Brodie resulted from the enthusiastic 25-year-old "just trying to have fun before the game started again."

A home crowd thinned considerably by blustery 46-degree conditions watched with amusement as Sean Case looked on with such amazement he forgot to videotape one of the nicest gestures anyone ever will see from a professional athlete.

"It was surreal, my son playing catch with a major-leaguer," Brodie's dad said.

Sean grew up on Addison Street in Wrigleyville, the kind of die-hard Cubs fan who sobbed calling Brodie after Game 7. He had seen hundreds of games at Clark and Addison but none affected him like this one, a Cubs' loss lasting 5 hours, 26 minutes but worth staying for every second. When Sean picked up Brodie in the morning, he fibbed by telling him they were going to a museum in Chicago only to produce Cubs tickets upon hitting city limits. And yet that wasn't even the biggest surprise of the day.

"Willson Contreras has a fan for life, my new favorite Cub," said Sean, 40, who works at a car dealership in Bloomington, Ill. "I was like, 'Brodie, where'd that day rate?' He jumped up and reached his hand as high as it would go and said, 'Way up here, Dad.' It feels like he became an overnight internet sensation."

Brodie Case, 11, with the ball he and Willson Contreras played catch with during last week's rain delay at Wrigley Field.

Brodie Case, 11, with the ball he and Willson Contreras played catch with during last week's rain delay at Wrigley Field.

The video went viral on local and national sports websites, with the Cubs posting it on various social-media platforms with the caption: "Waiting on a rain delay. So worth it. #ThatsCub". In Minnesota at a family wedding, Sarah Case had received a text from her ex-husband with a lot of exclamation points and ALL CAPS telling her what happened. Almost immediately, Sarah worried somebody at Brodie's school might have seen the video clip after she called the office that morning to excuse him for an out-of-town wedding.

"Now he's all over TV at the Cubs game and I felt totally like Ferris Bueller's day off," Sarah said. "I thought, I guess we'll see what the teachers say. … But I think everybody saw it was such a rare thing. Contreras could have waved and walked away. Instead, he made a kid's day by doing something Brodie never will forget."

At school Monday, Brodie brought the ball he and Contreras used in a plastic sandwich bag. One buddy, Drew White, who wears glasses with the Cubs logo, asked to hold the souvenir Brodie clutched as if it was the final out of the World Series. Even the teachers Sarah worried about got infected with Brodie Fever, with Cardinals fan Mrs. McAnally showing colleagues Brodie's highlight on her phone.

"This is like a small town, 1,900 people, and Contreras chose a person from one of the tiniest towns in Illinois to come play catch with?" Brodie said. "I'm lucky. Everybody at school was like, 'How cool is that?'"

At Central Ink in West Chicago, where Sarah works, the proud mom played coy Monday morning returning to an office full of Cubs fans.

"I asked them, 'Did you see that kid who got to play catch with Willson Contreras?'" Sarah said. "Not everybody had. So I said, 'Yeah, that was Brodie.'"

That was the charismatic kid who one day hopes to see Contreras again, and not just to ask the catcher to sign his special baseball.